AEG electric kettle
Peter Behrens’s kettle built of interchangeable parts: three shapes, three materials, three finishes.
Behrens became artistic consultant to AEG in 1907 and designed everything from factories to the logo and products. The kettles are counted among the first examples of industrial design in the modern sense. Examples are in MoMA and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich.
Materials: Brass, copper or nickel-plated metal; cane handle
Manufacture: Factory-made from standard parts that could be combined into some eighty variants.
The octagonal or oval body and the hammered or smooth finish – the variants.
Behrens’s hexagonal AEG logo on the kettle.